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Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Review of Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson

The
European Union very well may be the most interesting social experiment ever
attempted by mankind.Taking almost a
billion people with differing culture, language and belief, not to mention
centuries of unending feuds and wars, and unifying them under a single
government is an act unprecedented in world history.In many Europeans’ eyes, however, it’s just
that: an experiment, nothing certain about future coherence.A thought experiment which sees “Europe calving into icebergs”, Dave
Hutchinson’s 2014 novel Europe in Autumn
(2014) locates an atypical espionage thriller on the continent post-EU.

From
Scottish independence to Silesia’s secession from Poland, Europe in Autumn is set in a Europe recognizable culturally yet
fragmented politically.Rudi is an
Estonian chef working in Cracow, who finds himself faced with an interesting
and profitable proposition after his restaurant absorbs an evening’s destruction
from a group of drunk Hungarian mafia.His Estonian passport giving him access to polities in Europe where
Poles are not allowed, he completes a simple mission into Germany and returns
safe and sound.That step his first into
the world of cross-border information trafficking, it isn’t long before the
information begins tracking him too, fully exposing just how intricate and
complex the relationship between government and the individual truly is across
the freshly shattered European continent.

Hutchinson’s
narrative control in Europe in Autumn
is superb.A logarithmic curve, the novel
begins focused on the life of Rudi, and for the first few chapters may seem for
the impatient reader, rather static.But
slowly, almost imperceptibly, Hutchinson builds momentum until major chunks of
the continent have been swept up in the storyline—terrorism in Prague, Estonian
national park secession, illegal Scottish border crossings, etc.—culminating in
a stealthily exciting conclusion.The
prose just as paced and measured, Rudi’s life is given out in doses as his
connections and the implications of his actions steadily extend outward, deeper
and deeper into the splintered politics.

Some
reviewers have critiqued the novel’s ending. (Adam Roberts calls it a “a knight's-move that points the reader
rather sharply in the direction of the sequel.”)For me, the ending felt natural—that sharp
vertical movement of a true logarithmic curve.Rather than tying the plot threads strung out to that point into a neat
bow as traditional spy vs. spy novels do, it slingshots the reader past their
expectations, forcing them to ruminate upon the situation and why, indeed, such
a planned, deliberate narrative would end as it does.

It’s to
this point the novel’s title would seem to become the main fall back point, and
in effect transitioning Europe in Autumn
from espionage thriller to (potential) political statement.

Cultural
differences, resource availability, language, historical events,
realpolitik—however you want to parse the sub-set of issues, it’s possible to
view Europe in Autumn as an
indication Europe can only temporarily form a political and commercial
alliance.Working with the seasonal
metaphor, the continent may be too fractious for such an alliance to
permanently take hold, and that the current Union is just one point in the
cycle—summer, by indication now, the novel’s autumn to come.Whether or not the it is indeed political is
up to the individual reader, but Hutchinson at least creates the window of
possibility.

I have
heard other rumblings that Europe in
Autumn is not a true novel, merely a fix up of three novellas.While there is some material to work with in
favor of that argument, there remain building blocks implanted in the three
sections that clearly work toward something greater—the aforementioned
‘ambiguous ending’ the capstone—to offset it.Thus, for as superficially episodic as the novel feels, there are
character interests and sub-plots common enough to all three sections to dispel
any doubt Hutchinson has foisted a collection on the reader.

In the
end, Europe in Autumn, with its
fragmented Europe and all the border crossings, bureaucracy, and red tape that
accompany, is the perfect place to deploy a coureur story.While I couldn’t shake the feeling: this is a
writer testing out his spy novel shoes, Hutchinson’s prose remains tight-tight,
his sense of plot movement and structure pitch-perfect, and his handling of
dialogue and character interaction spot-on.The comparisons to John LeCarre will be obvious, but there are just
enough elements of genre (slight as they may be) to link the novel to other
quality spy(-ish) speculative fiction works, including Ken MacLeod’s The Execution Channel and Jon Courtenay
Grimwood’s Arabesk trilogy.The novel’s ending, as Roberts says, “may leave some readers blinking rather hard,” but everything else will
have them relaxed in enjoyment.

2 comments:

Great, perfect review, as always. The three-novella fix up suggestion is new to me. I thought it all gelled quite nicely.

As for that sudden, "knight's move" ending, I loved it and, at the time, had no idea there would be a sequel (and a third?). That suddenness fits well within the context of those jagged, impulsive nation-states. I thought it was a ballsy way to end a book, and it intentionally leaves the reader disoriented. It seems to be less a "buy my next book" scheme, and more a "perhaps you should read this again" red flag. It could easily stand on its own.

I haven't read Stations Eleven (I originally wrote Stations Elven; Tolkienian slip, the bane of every spec fic reader), but based on everything I've read, it seems well-written, but perhaps a touch overly sentimental in its post-ap meets art agenda - just the stuff an awards committee can safely garner with 'the best'. But I will read it someday. It's got to be better than the majority of crap on the market today.

And totally agreed on the insularity of Europe in Autumn. Were there never a sequel I could die satisfied. But now that it's known Hutchinson is writing a sequel, I guess we're both still interested what direction he takes it. . ;)